


Second Chance

by lorata



Series: We Must Be Killers: Tales from District 2 [18]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Careers (Hunger Games), Child Indoctrination, Conditioning, District 2, Gen, Harm to Animals, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 08:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17383265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata
Summary: “I’m not telling you you’re a failure. I’m not telling you there’s something wrong with you. I’m telling you that you aren’t a killer. Do you understand there’s nothing wrong with that?”There are no second chances at the District 2 Career Program. You fail, you're out, no exceptions. Unless, of course, you can convince them otherwise.13-year-old Devon passes all the tests to make it into full-time residential training, but flunks out on his sweet disposition and temperament. He has one shot to change their minds.(a brief character study and exploration of the ways the Centre warps its children)





	Second Chance

**Author's Note:**

> An anon asked me to write something about failure within the Career Program, so I uh, wrote this. Warnings for animal death and institutionalized child indoctrination within a system that commodifies and sensationalizes child murder. So, you know, the usual.

Too thin. Devon’s chest squeezed, his breath coming loud in his ears, echoing inside his skull. He turned the envelope over in his hands. He’d seen Galen’s envelope at school, he hadn’t stopped bragging about it. It had been as thick as his thumb, almost, stuffed with all that paperwork for his guardian to sign. They couldn’t read any of it, of course, but they’d scribbled across the bottom anyway, proud and beaming. Galen hadn’t shut up for days.

Galen’s envelope had been thick and yellow and bulky, squishy when you pushed down with one finger. Devon’s was flat and white and stiff, no room to give when he pressed down. Devon stood there frozen, holding it flat in both hands, eyes getting wider and wider until they burned.

“What you got there, shortcakes?” Max said from behind him, reaching over Devon’s shoulder to snatch the envelope out of his hands.

“Hey!” Devon protested, but too late, he’d already torn it open and pulled the single sheet of paper free. The anger spiked in him, hot and sparking, and he fought the Centre voice in his head telling him _go, hurt, make him pay for it_. Ignored the part of him that noted Max’s unprotected kidneys, the spot behind his knees that would drop him to the ground, how Devon could leap onto his back for a chokehold and get his elbow jammed beneath Max’s jaw, squeeze until he dropped the paper. But that was Centre-Devon and he was Home-Devon, and Home-Devon scowled and grumbled while his older brothers teased him and mussed his hair and took things out of his hands just because.

Home-Devon _needed_ to get out of here.

“What’s going on out there?” Ma called from the kitchen, spoon-in-hand warning in her voice.

“Nothing!” Max tossed the paper onto the table, careless, and ran upstairs. Halfway up he leaned down to yell over the railing, “Devon failed his Res exam.”

“Oh, well.” Ma appeared in the doorway, flour coating her hands to the wrists. A wisp of hair had come loose from her braid, and a streak of white across her forehead showed where she’d tried to brush it back already. She smiled at Devon, eyes soft and crinkling at the corners. “That’s all right, then. We’ll be glad to have you around the house again.”

No.

He dashed forward, grabbed the paper and scoured it. Maybe Max made it up, maybe he’d said it to tease him, maybe the Centre used big words and he didn’t understand — but no, there it was, _regret to inform you_ and _small selection of candidates_ and _your district thanks you_ and _many ways to serve_ burning into his eyes. Devon stared at the letter, breathing harder and faster until his chest ached and his eyes stung and the room disappeared around him, blanking out to white.

“Devon?” Ma’s hand on his shoulder startled him, made him jump and lash out with both fists. She frowned, mouth pressing thin and eyebrows folding in the middle, as Home-Devon pushed Centre-Devon out of the way and dropped his hands. “Easy, baby boy. I know you’re disappointed, but it’s for the best. Why don’t you help me in the kitchen?”

Home-Devon loved helping in the kitchen, standing next to Ma and peeling the vegetables, learning how to make a little food go a long way. Loved her quiet in a house full of chaos, though Ma could bellow with the best of them when she needed to. But today, with bees buzzing under his skin and the letter’s words carved behind his eyeballs, Devon imagined standing at the counter patiently chopping up potatoes while his brothers trickled in from the mines and the noise in the house got louder and louder —

“Devon,” Ma said again, this time in the voice she got when she and Dad added up the numbers at the end of the month and the ones on the right side didn’t match the left. “On second thought, why don’t you go outside? I’ll get Max to help me in the kitchen.”

Devon didn’t try to argue. He pulled on his coat, a patched-up hand-me-down from Max-from-Raf-from-Gabe, shoved his feet in his boots, and pushed his way out into the cold. Too much ice on the roads to do much except pick his way slowly but that didn’t matter, Devon veered off the path where nobody had shovelled and the snow covered the hard-packed dirt and dead grass instead and broke into a run.

He ran, and ran, and ran, around and around and around as his breath puffed in front of him and the icy air stabbed knives into his lungs and burned deep in his chest. He ran until his body felt gross and sweaty inside his coat, and he fumbled with the buttons and let the coat hang loose as the wind blasted his thin sweater and ran again. He ran until his ankle turned on a hard lump of dirt beneath the snow and he went down, banging his knee hard and sending a sharp spike of pain up through his thigh.

Devon curled around his leg, fingers digging into his ankle and face pressed to his knee. Tears stung his eyes, and he squeezed them shut and gasped out breaths to try to hold it in, except what did it matter anymore? The Centre wouldn’t take points away for crying now. The Centre didn’t want him. The Centre didn’t want him and his family never wanted him to go in the first place and would never understand why it mattered. Why he needed to get away.

Eventually the cold seeped in through his jacket and the tears froze on his cheeks, and the growing ache in his fingers overtook the pain in his ankle. And so Devon stood up, brushed the snow from his clothes, and headed back to the house.

No one said anything as Devon slammed the door shut against the wind and hung up his jacket, kicking off his boots and lining them up next to Raf’s. Dad wouldn’t be home from his shift for hours yet, but he always said they should eat first, then they’d all come together again while he scarfed down his own meal before bed. Raf and Max traded stories about the boys down at the mines, Max kidded Raf about the girl he’d started seeing, asking if he’d braided flowers into her hair yet — “It’s January, you meatstick!” — and Sarah said nothing, but reached under the table to hold Devon’s hand.

Late that night, after everyone had gone to sleep, Dad came in and sat on the edge of Devon’s bed. “I know you’re disappointed,” he said, brushing Devon’s hair back from his forehead. “But we’re proud of you for getting this far, I hope you know that. And we’ll do just fine without the stipend, don’t you worry. It’s not your job to think you’ve gotta pay for things in this family, Devon. You just worry about you.”

“Yeah,” Devon said, turning his face away. “Okay.”

 

The next day, at two o’clock, Devon left school with the rest of the Program crowd and headed for the Centre. But instead of following them to the training gym, he split off and wandered the hallways until he came to the head trainer’s office. Heart thumping, Devon pushed open the door and walked in.

She raised her eyebrows at him, but a second later her eyes dropped to the piece of paper clutched in his hand — crumpled, then desperately smoothed back out. She sighed, sat back and folded her hands across her desk. “Devon. The Program’s decisions are final. You should go home.”

Devon dragged over a chair and sat down, staring her straight in the eye. “Why didn’t I pass?”

She gave him a flat stare, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Ma that time she caught Gabe holding Max upside down over the edge of the stairs, and Devon didn’t flinch. Finally she sighed again and got up to fish through a giant filing cabinet. “Here we are,” she said, flipping open a plain manila envelope and turning to the latest page. Devon sat on his hands and counted backwards from one hundred to stop himself from leaning forward to peek at what’s inside. “Ah, yes, I thought so. Well, you passed your athletics, and you know your history, and your combat skills are strong. But you refused a sword for your individual weapons test and went for polearms.”

Devon crossed his arms. “So? Everybody chose swords. I wanted to be different.”

“Or you wanted distance between yourself and your opponent.” She ran her finger down the page. “You passed the memorization test, but you made up nursery rhymes to help you keep the names straight. Which itself is not a problem, mnemonics are encouraged, but making the death list into something harmless suggests that, at some level, you aren’t comfortable with it.”

He clenched his jaw. She glanced at him, said nothing, kept reading. “And you cried at your animal kill test.”

“I did not!” Devon sat bolt upright, fists balled. “I didn’t! Check the video!”

He still remembered the kill test. Those eyes staring up at him, big and dark and wet. The heartbeat, fluttering so fast. The knife in his hand. The blood pouring hot and sticky over his fingers. The trainers taking the little corpse away.

“You did,” she said gently. “You don’t remember. It’s called dissociating. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s -- Devon, none of this is a bad thing.” She closed the file, sat forward and regarded him with serious eyes. “I’m not telling you you’re a failure. I’m not telling you there’s something wrong with you. I’m telling you that you aren’t a killer. Do you understand there’s nothing wrong with that?”

Devon flinched. He’d seen the Games. He’d stood for his first Reaping last summer. He knew the real reason why they trained. But they never talked about it at the Centre, not yet — not until they passed the exam and entered Residential. Hearing the head trainer say it like that felt like she’d yanked the chair out from under him and let him fall, slamming his tailbone on the hard floor.

“I need to be here,” Devon said. Years and years and years of wearing his brothers’ clothes, their shoes, their coats and hats and mittens, following everything they’d ever done. In three years he’d follow them to the mines and the rest of his life would play out just like theirs, the house and the wife and the babies just like Gabe, and he didn’t know why but it twisted _wrong_ inside him. But his brothers never made it to Residential, and if Devon could do that, if he could do this _one thing_ his brothers never managed to do, then that would make all the difference. “Please. Let me prove it.”

“You’re not listening.” She shook her head slowly. “You already had your chance to prove it. You’re a good kid. Go home, listen to your parents, and hey, stay in school.” Her eyes turned intent in a way Devon didn’t understand. “There’s more options than the mines, you know.”

You’re not supposed to laugh at grownups but Devon did then, just once. “There _was_ ,” he said, and stood up so fast the chair legs screeched against the tile.

She didn’t bother to send a trainer to escort him out. Devon was a good kid, always followed the rules, never got a scolding from the trainers. What was he going to do? Start screaming and clinging to the doorway and force them to drag him out? That wouldn’t help anything. She’d made her decision and that was the end of it.

Except he’d gotten mixed up trying to find the office, and on his way to the door Devon turned a corner and found the big, solid steel doors that led to the animal room. His breath stuck in his throat and he felt it now, a faraway feeling that started in the back of his head, like someone had stuck a hook in him and was pulling him out of himself like a balloon on a long string, floating high and watching himself on the ground. But no, no, Devon clenched his fists and dug his nails in hard, bit his tongue until he tasted blood, and he focused on the cracks on the floor and the sharp scent of antiseptic in the air until he came back down. He had to stay. He couldn’t disappear this time.

They had cameras here. They’d see him for sure. Devon found the nearest one, up in the corner, stared at it for five seconds, and squared his jaw. Then he marched forward and wrenched open the door.

The animals stared at him from their cages, and for a second Devon felt the balloon tugging at him again, but he yanked himself back with the same pattern: Nails, blood, cracks, smell. He took a deep breath, found the camera on the ceiling, and raised his head. “Candidate Devon Miller, retaking Residential Exam,” he said. “Animal kill test and memorization portion concurrent.”

He stepped forward, chose the nearest cage. “Twenty-seventh Hunger Games. Arena: desert. Victor: 9F.” He twisted the lock on the cage and opened the door, taking out its inhabitant. No knife this time. “Twenty-fourth place: 11M, blunt force trauma. Twenty-third place: 5M, blunt force trauma. Twenty-second place: 6F, exsanguination.” He knelt, trapping it against his knees. Found the neck, braced it between his thumb and middle finger. “Twenty-first place: 5F, exsanguination. Twentieth place: 3M, exsanguination. Nineteenth place: 7M, blunt force trauma.” _Snap_. “Eighteenth place…”

Devon made it through three different animals, one Games start to finish, and half the list of drowning deaths by the time they found him. The head trainer stood framed in the doorway, the light bright behind her so Devon had to shade his eyes. “Devon,” she said, calm and grave. “You want to tell me what you’re doing?”

Devon held out his hands. No blood — he’d snapped the necks clean. He raised his face to let her see the lack of tears. She didn’t need to know much his stomach churned. “I wanted to prove I belong here but you wouldn’t let me, so I did. I passed the test, I know I did. I want to be here. I know I can do it. Just give me another chance.”

She studied him for a long time before saying, “Go home.” But this time, something in her expression changed.

 

Three days later, a fat, yellow envelope arrived at home with a whole pile of papers and a million places for a guardian to sign. “I don’t understand,” Ma said. “I can’t — I don’t know how to read all this. What do all these words even mean? I thought you said they wouldn’t take you?”

“I guess they changed their minds,” Devon said, his head spinning. “Will you sign it?”

“You know you don’t have to do this.” Ma reached across the table and laid a hand on his wrist. “We don’t need the stipend, baby. You don’t have to go.”

Centre-Devon wanted to yank his hand away, but Home-Devon only smiled. “Yes I do. Don’t worry, Ma, I’ll be back.”

 

The head trainer called him in the day he returned the paperwork. “This is it, you understand me? No more second chances. After this, you pass or fail like everyone else.”

Devon pressed a hand to his chest. His bracelet felt heavy on his wrist, the orange bead glowing under the halogens. “Yes ma’am. Don’t you worry.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

He spun on his heel and skipped out the door before remembering he probably should have marched, but too late now. Devon gripped his bracelet, let out a wild laugh, and took off running.


End file.
